The prevailing theme at the conference this year is no surprise to anyone: the economy. Vendors are asking customers about how their purchasing plans might change and talking to each other about possible market scenarios. But all of the uncertainty aside, it’s a great year for HR technology. As always, there is a plethora of new offers and an ever-increasing supply of talent management software solutions on the market. And I’m pleased to say that a year later, Lawson is as well positioned as it has ever been to compete in this space.

For your listening pleasure, I have provided a couple of video clips that bring a snipet of the conference to an internet browser near you:

I interviewed Lori Simpson at Geisinger Health here. Lori is the newest customer in the Lawson Talent Management family, and she’s a great spokesperson for why our product strategy aligns with their business transformation objectives. Thanks, Lori for all of your support at the show this year!

We also announced our partnership with Talent Technologies this week, and I had a few minutes with one of their executives, Praj Patel. They’ve done some breakthrough work to help recruiters leverage Web 2.0 technologies. In particular, this partnership aligns nicely with our Spaces strategy for recruiters — bring the work to their space. Among other things, it’s about capturing resumes wherever you find them and zapping them into the Lawson database with ease. Check it out here.

I participated in a lively roundtable discussion on Web 2.0 technologies in HR. Key issues? First, it’s all about definitions, and the term ‘web 2.0′ means basically whatever you want it to mean. For the panelists that are using them, it’s about blogs, wikis, instant messaging and a bit of collaboration all tied to a corporate intranet. Great stuff, but probably stretching the prevailing definition of what Web 2.0 is really about. More importantly, though — the energy of the audience was powerful. There’s tons of interest in the topic judging by the number of unanswered audience questions and the fact that the panelists got through only 3 of the 9 prepared discussion topics. A subject worthy of further discussion which I will try to address directly in a blog post soon. A great session choice by the conference planners.

It’s time to gear up for Day 2, so I will leave you with only one final comment: Happy Birthday to PercpetiveHRTechnology – one year old today!